How do you deal?

How do you deal with being inundated with religious suggestions, comments and dialogue on a daily basis?

I feel like since I finally identified myself as an atheist, I've seen countless facebook statuses/comments, forum posts, instagram pics etc full of religious passages or suggestions to "Praise Jesus/Allah" or have "God" in your life. I can't even read a self-help article without some reference to a bible scripture or assertion to have a relationship with "God".

One of the most useful things I have found is to keep educating myself, so I know when what they're saying is complete hogwash. I first thought I would be better able to debate them then, but not everybody needs to, wants to, or should be engaged in debate. Wheat I found out was that I could confidently dismiss most of their idiocy, see where they are at, and just continue being true to myself. They are not as threatening or as irritating as they used to be because I won't engage in most of their stupid arguments. I am also not apologetic for not believing, and I'm sure I give off that vibe. People still accuse me of being a "seeking God" unbeknownst to myself, I guess, but I assure them I am not, with humor if possible.

I agree Diane I feel I need to educate myself as much as possible. I'm not a great face-to-face debater, but in this situation I'm sure trying... I work for a christian corp full of hard core "God is Good" every hour...and saying grace before luncheons! Even the "god bless you"s annoy me lately....It's hard to bite my tongue and the older I get, the harder it gets. The whole thing just feels uncomfortable for me :( But I ignore and respect..

I'm actually at a point where I feel like EVERYTHING they say is complete hogwash, but I completely agree with you on the subject of educating oneself. I find myself slipping into more and more religious debates online (and coming out of them either feeling like I've been arguing with a brick wall, or feeling utterly disgusted at the audacity of some people's attempts to discredit my intelligence when they're the ones trying to justify the invisible man in the sky). I'm still working on being confident in my non-belief, unfortunately in large part of the black community it's more of an outrage than killing someone. I tend to use the expression "non-religious" or "non-practicing" when people ask me what my beliefs are.

I have to agree: Humor is the best way to deal with it. If you took all the nut jobs seriously, you would either go insane or consider joining them just to make the pain stop. Neither of which are acceptable in my book. I stopped using FB for that very reason, too many nut cakes out there telling me how Jeebus loves me and all that.

It helps me to remember that the intent of the believer is often not to do evil but to do what they see as good. I know that doesn't change the reality of what their actions are, but it helps me to put myself in their shoes. Also, remember it is usually not personal when people prothelytize. Most of the time, it is about what is going on inside of the believer rather than anything to do with you.

I keep my sanity by checking in with like-minded people over the internet, reading reality-based literture, and taking an anthropological, deconstructionist approach to situations in which the religulous cannot be avoided. It's also nice to take time out now and then to hole up with a nice book on atheism or humanism.